AUBURN – A proposed downtown parking garage would move to the northern edge of Great Falls Plaza in the latest version of a site plan there.

Councilors this week got their first look at a new site plan that includes a hotel and smaller, separate bus station across from the Auburn Esplanade apartment building. The site plan is scheduled to go to the Planning Board for review March 11.

Plans initially placed the garage in the center of Great Falls Plaza, across from the Esplanade, with an attached bus station. The center of the plaza is now reserved for building development, with plans for a new hotel along Turner Street. The 400-space parking garage would be tucked away in the Great Falls Plaza lot with its back to the Maine Central Railroad tracks.

“It puts the garage where the land is least attractive, right next to the train tracks,” Economic Development Director Roland Miller said. “That’s a huge benefit for private development. Nobody wants to build an office right next to the train tracks.”

It could also make the garage less expensive. Plans call for dressing the garage up only along the southern side, where it faces the rest of Great Falls Plaza. The rest could be left unadorned.

Miller said the new site plan is less complicated for drivers.

“It circulates better,” Planning Director David Galbraith said Monday. Earlier plans called for several entrances onto Turner Street between Hampshire Street and the railroad, creating a confusing layout of roads and turns in the plaza itself.

The latest plan has a single road running between Turner Street and the garage.

The new bus station would no longer be part of the garage. It would be moved to the corner of Hampshire Street and Great Falls Plaza, in front of the Esplanade. The city received a $247,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2004 to pay for that work.

The city has planned to build the garage and bus station since 2004. The original plan called for making it part of a Great Falls parking garage. Councilors approved $5 million in bonds in 2004 to build the garage on city land on the northern part of the plaza, between the Esplanade and Tom Platz’s surface parking lot.

Miller said he expects to see construction work in Great Falls Plaza begin this summer on both the garage and the new hotel.

“It all depends on the private investors,” he said. “We can’t begin work on the garage until they begin their work. But going forward, we expect it all to go hand in hand, and our objective is to finish all of it at about the same time.”